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This past summer, an enthusiastic and artistic subset of the Penn State Plant Pathology Association (PPA) painted a 108-pound concrete garden stool mushroom for a competition at the 2011 Kennett Square Mushroom Festival on September 9, 2011. The mission of PPA is to provide members with a platform to develop and discuss topics related to plant pathology, and to explore and promote plant pathology within the Penn State community.

Painting the mushroom was quite a feat and took many late evenings
of painting. The students chose a day
and night theme for their mushroom that included a sun/moon, birds, insects,
and mushrooms. Graduate students that
helped with the mushroom were Maria Velez Climent, Yinfei Li, Hilary Cheesman,
Steven Conaway, Misha Moschera (AEE), Emily Helliwell, Anna Testen, and Jill
Demers. Kim Paley, Senior Research
Technologist for Plant Pathology, transported the art work to the festival. The
competition featured mushrooms by 13 different artists. A silent auction was held during the weekend
of the mushroom festival and the three mushrooms with the highest bids would win
$300 for their artists. After a weekend
of bidding, the mushroom created by the PPA was one of the winning
mushrooms! PPA won $300 and the
department received an interesting piece of artwork to display.